When discussing Amy Ryan’s career, it’s hard not to mention motherhood.
“I mean, I play a lot of moms, but I also try to hope that they are in a different scenario—I try not to hold a laundry basket in scenes,” the actress says with a laugh. “I think I only did that once. But I try to find: Who is this person really, how are they the multi-taskers, the emotional centers of the family?”
Ryan’s roster of film and television roles includes an impressive array of strong mothers from a variety of backgrounds, from the blunt but tender ex-wife of an actor (Michael Keaton) in 2014’s “Birdman,” to the drug-running mother of an abducted girl in 2007’s crime thriller “Gone Baby Gone,” for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Ryan, 46, is also a mom off-screen. She and husband Eric Slovin, a comedy writer and co-executive producer of Comedy Central’s hit show “Broad City,” raise their 5-year-old daughter, Georgia, in Brooklyn—one borough over from where Ryan grew up in Flushing, Queens.
Lauded for both her dramatic and comedic roles, in person—over hot chocolate at a West Village outpost of Le Pain Quotidien—Ryan displays more of the comic persona that calls to mind her role as Holly Flax (Steve Carell’s counterpart and love interest on “The Office”). She’s thoughtful, but also never far from a punchline, whether discussing skipping college at NYU to pursue acting—“I said that if I would go back to college, I would learn about science or history or English—get in debt for something really good”—or debating New York versus LA. “When you’re getting to know someone, maybe some people ask: ‘Are children something that you want, or are you religious?’ And for me it was: ‘Do you have any desire to live in LA?’”
She’s also quick with her anecdotes: “If I have to go out for something, [Georgia] will say: ‘Why are you so fancy?’…then I tell her: ‘It’s very much like Cinderella, Georgia, it all goes back, it all turns into a pumpkin, don’t worry.’”
Growing up, Ryan had long aspired to be an actress, attending the city’s prestigious High School of the Performing Arts. Her career began on the stage, when she was cast in the national tour of Neil Simon’s play “Biloxi Blues” out of high school, which was followed by acting off- and on-Broadway, television, and film roles. “I was lucky to stay busy and keep working, and never have a job except being an actor,” she says.
Though she may not have the high-profile fame of an Angelina Jolie or a Jennifer Aniston, Ryan’s an actress whose characters people remember and often treasure—from roles like Beadie Russell, the Port Authority police officer she played on “The Wire,” and of course her role on the “The Office”—which speaks to both her talent and her sensibility.
“I can tell when I’m bored reading a script,” she says. “It’s the ones that I can read really fast [that I choose], and if they also scare me a bit then I have to do it.”
In an industry which necessitated the invention of the “Bechdel Test”—a criteria for judging films based on whether two women in a movie talk to each other about something other than a man—Ryan’s careful selection of multi-dimensional roles reflects her awareness of the messages and impact that movies and television can have on the people they portray. Naming her roles in “Gone Baby Gone” and “Win Win” (2011) as two of the performances she’s been most satisfied with, she explains: “Those were just really well drawn-out women, so that just feels better to do.”
And, though Ryan’s been successful in both comedic and dramatic roles, she’s drawn to drama’s possibilities as a means of expression for people who don’t often get to see themselves portrayed onscreen.
“It’s nice to slip in and be a voice for people who don’t get that platform; drama lends to that more, and I usually get cast as people who are a little bit more underprivileged or blue collar,” she explains. “So if I can represent that world for them, and they can see some part of themselves, I like that… But there’s something good in all of [my roles] for me, or something I’ve taken away. There’s such joy in ‘The Office,’ and I have great pride in how many people loved ‘The Wire.’ I feel like, at the end of the day, that might have given the most thought to people.”
Just as she knows what will fulfill her in her professional life, Ryan has equally high standards for how she wants to live life as a mom.
“Now that [Georgia’s] in school, I choose jobs differently.” she says. “If a job happens in New York, that’s like winning—finding the golden ticket… When I was younger I’d be so excited that a script filmed in Spain, or England, and now I’m like: ‘Please, I’d take Jersey, Staten Island.’”
Like many of the moms she’s played, Ryan has managed more than her fair share of multi-tasking: She filmed “Win Win” when Georgia was only 6 months old (“I nodded off once while standing on my mark for a lighting adjustment,” she recalls), and while filming the upcoming “Goosebumps” in Atlanta, on days she wasn’t needed she’d fly back to New York, making about 15 round trips throughout the course of the filming.
When Ryan is home with her daughter, it’s not just what they do together—like going to the theater or Brooklyn Bridge Park—but the everyday moments that she treasures.
“I cherish holding her hand walking to school, and the chats we have on the way,” she says. “And I know that there’s going to come a time when she’ll slip her hand out of mine, when it’s not cool enough to hold hands with your mom, so I love that. I love the questions… It’s just, it’s a beautiful thing to see the world again through a child’s eyes. Especially when you think you know more, and have seen more. They have a better point of view, I think.”
Ryan and her daughter enjoy downtime together in Brooklyn Heights by painting, both seated at Georgia’s child-sized craft table—“I find that peaceful and grounding”—going on walks, roller skating in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and playdates with the children of the couple’s friends.
“She’s not a precocious child who kind of sings and tap dances, I guess the way I was,” Ryan says. “She’s a bit more introspective…when she’s creative, it’s about paper, pens, crayons and things.”
At home, Ryan says she plays the disciplinarian, which is “a bummer,” she explains with a laugh.
“[My husband] will mirror me, he’ll be…ready to back me up, but he’s the softie. So he gets more of the hugs.” But in the Ryan-Slovin household, despite the couple’s busy schedules, parenting is truly a team endeavor. “We manage, and it’s because I think we both want to be there, which is a huge thing, and we can shift our schedules a bit,” she says. Ryan is also thankful for the supportive network of parents that she’s met through Georgia’s preschool. “My sitter was stuck on the train one day, and I couldn’t get to school in time to pick up my daughter… I text five moms, and in a second they all text back saying: ‘We have her,’” she says. “That’s huge. That’s community.”
According to Ryan, who met Slovin through mutual friends, having a career in different facet of the same industry as her husband helps the couple support each other. “Before I met Eric, I remember saying I wanted to meet someone within my business but not in the exact line of work,” Ryan recalls. “It does help [having] someone who understands that world…[but] we don’t have the same bag of problems or concerns. So it’s a nice balance.”
However, the couple’s professional worlds recently converged for the first time. “Broad City” fans can look forward to Ryan and Slovin both making an appearance this season— Slovin will play a bartender, and Ryan, a mom—in the same episode. “It was an all-in-the-family kind of experience,” Ryan says, though she admits that she asked her husband not to come into work on the day she was filming for the episode.
“I was really nervous there; I’m such a fan of the show, and you don’t want to mess it up, you don’t want to come in as a fan, and then drool all over yourself,” she says. “So I made him stay home that day.”
In the next year, Ryan has a variety of upcoming roles that may not only bring her more attention, but also serve expand her fan base among younger audiences. She’ll play Tom Hanks’ wife in an unnamed, Spielberg-directed Cold War thriller, set to be released this fall. And in this May’s “Monster Trucks,” Ryan will play a single mom at odds with her teenage son. “The one thing I love in [that] script is the lead actress, Jane Levy, her character’s really smart—she’s a scientist, she’s not waiting for the boy to kiss her… I think that’ll be nice for young girls to see,” Ryan says. In “Goosebumps,” (scheduled for an August 2015 release) Ryan will play a mom who moves with her son from New York to a small town to start a new life, where they end up being neighbors with Goosebumps author R.L. Stein (played by Jack Black).
Ryan not only creates entertainment for a living, but like all moms, also is faced with deciding what her daughter can watch—“Frozen” and classic musicals are on the list. “We took [Georgia] to see ‘Aladdin’ [on Broadway], which she loved, and the questions were all about Jasmine’s belly button,” she says. “I was very aware of that.” Ryan admits that Georgia likes to play with her makeup, but meanwhile she teaches her that “beauty comes from within, and all those good truths…it’s fun to decorate yourself, but that’s not who you are.”
From Ryan’s point of view, just living in New York is entertainment enough. “To grow up in New York, I think, is a great thing,” Ryan says. There’s just so much stimulus and so many interesting people, and [so much] culture, I mean all the reasons we live here as adults—why not start as a kid?”
Comparing Georgia’s NYC childhood to her own in Queens, Ryan remembers the freedom of being able to play in the street and ride bikes around the neighborhood. “The only rule was be home at dinner…today, it’s structured playdates.”
She’s also very aware of the way the city itself has changed since her childhood, citing a recent trip to the Theater District, during which she was surprised to discover a large apartment complex under construction near Times Square.
“The city is changing drastically—architecturally [and] economically at such a fast rate, that I don’t recognize a lot of it,” she says. “It’s daunting to me.”
Before caring for a family was part of her daily schedule, Ryan says she would walk the city, exploring and observing. “If I had time on my hands, I would just walk… I do miss kind of meandering through the city, because people-watching is the best acting class for me,” she says. “Seeing these people who I steal things from, and I put them in a movie—some quirk or something about them.”
These days, Ryan may have less time for city rambles, but when asked if she’s had to make any major sacrifices as an actor or a parent, her answer is a resolute “no.”
“I feel like even that word, sacrifice—you’re somehow heartbroken that you’ve had to choose this over that—and it’s not a sacrifice in any way to choose family over work,” she says. “I still find time to see theater—not as much—but I still see films, I still have friends. I just feel like I have more. I have less sleep—I have a lot less sleep,” she laughs. “But that’s okay.”
